If a diver surfaces too quickly, he may suffer the bends.Nitrogen( 氮 ) dissolved(溶解) in his blood is suddenly liberated by the reduction of pressure. The consequence, if the bubbles ( 气 泡 )accumulate in a joint, is sharp pain and abent body—thus the name.If the bubbles form in his lungs or his brain, the consequence can be death.

Other air-breathing animals also suffer this decompression( 减 压 ) sickness if they surface too fast: whales, for example. And so, long ago, did ichthyosaurs. That these ancient sea animals got the bends can be seen from their bones. If bubbles of nitrogen form inside the bone they can cut off its blood supply. This kills the cells in the bone, and consequently weakens it, sometimes to the point of collapse. Fossil (化石)bones that have caved in on them selves are thus a sign that the animal once had the bends. Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas knewall this when he began a study of ichthyosaur bones to find out how widespread the problem was in the past. What he

particularly wanted to investigate was how ichthyosaurs adapted to the problem of decompression over the 150 million years. To this end, he and his colleagues traveled the world’s natural-history museums, looking at hundreds of ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period and from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression. Instead, he was astonished to discover the opposite. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen( 标 本 ) showed evidence of that sort of injury. If ichthyosaurs did evolve an anti-decompression means, they clearly did so quickly—and, most strangely, they lost it afterwards. But that is not what Dr Rothschild thinks happened. He suspects it was evolution in other animals that caused the change. Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator (捕食动物) such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks and crocodiles, both of which were fond of ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were mercifully shark- and crocodile-free. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey(猎物) as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.

61. Which of the following is a typical symptom of the bends?A. A twisted body.B. A gradual decrease in blood supply.C. A sudden release of nitrogen in blood.

D. A drop in blood pressure.62. The purpose of Rothschild’s study is to see________ .A. how often ichthyosaurs caught the bendsB. how ichthyosaurs adapted to decompressionC. why ichthyosaurs bent their bodiesD. when ichthyosaurs broke their bones63. Rothschild’sfindingstatedinParagraph4 .A. confirmed his assumption B. speeded up hisresearch processC. disagreed with his assumption D. changed his research objectives64. Rothschild might have concluded that ichthyosaurs.A. failed to evolve an anti decompression meansB. gradually developed measures against the bendsC. died out because of large sharks and crocodilesD. evolved an anti decompression means but soon lost it

DMark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. And he surely

deserves additional praise: the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.

I say clever because anti-slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War. H. B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.

Again and again, in the postwar years, Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race. Consider the most controversial, at least today, of Twain’s novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struckthemas rude. Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums( 贫 民 窟 ).” More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped slave, and many occurrences of the word nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often severely criticized, never appears in it.)

But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point. The novel is strongly anti-slavery. Jim’s search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic. As J. Chadwick has pointed out, the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities, “the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual: Jim, the father and the man.”

There is much more. Twain’s mystery novel Pudd’nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day. Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior ( 低 等 的 ) to whites, especially in intelligence, Twain’s tale centered in part around two babies switched

at birth. A slave gave birth to her master’s baby and, for fear that the child should be sold South, switched him for the master’s baby by his wife. The slave’s light-skinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slave-holding class. The master’s wife’s baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.

The point was difficult to miss: nurture ( 养 育 ), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example—were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.

Twain’s racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called “nigger shows” in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.

Was Twain a racist? Asking the questioning the 21 stcentury is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.

65. How do Twain’s novels on slavery differ from Stowes?A. Twain was more willing to deal with racism.B. Twain’s attack on racism was much less open.C. Twain’s themes seemed to agree with plots.D. Twain was openly concerned with racism.66. Recent criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arose partly from its_____.A. target readers at the bottomB. anti slavery attitudeC. rather impolite languageD. frequent use of “nigger”67. What best proves Twain’s anti slavery stand according to the author?A. Jim’s search for his family was described in detail.B. The slave’s voice was first heard in American novels.C. Jim grew up into a man and a father in the white culture.D. Twain suspected that the slaves were less intelligent.

68. The story of two babies switched mainly indicates that .A. slaves were forced to give up their babies to their mastersB. slaves babies could pickup slave holders‵ way of speakingC. blacks‵ social position was shaped by how they were brought up

D. blacks were born with certain features of prejudice69. What does the under lined word“they” in Paragraph 7 refer to?A. The attacks.B. Slavery and prejudice.C. White men.D. The shows.70. What does the author mainly argue for?A. Twain had done more than his contemporary writers to attack racism.B. Twain was an admirable figure comparable to Abraham Lincoln.C. Twain’s works had been banned on unreasonable grounds.D. Twain s works should be read from a historical point of view.

第四部分:任务型阅读(共 10 小题;每小题 1 分,满分 10 分) 请认真阅读下列短文,并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。 注意:请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。 每个空格只填一个单词。

Quiet Virtue: The ConscientiousThe everyday signs of conscientiousness (认真尽责)—being punctual, careful in

doing work, self-disciplined, and scrupulous ( 一丝不苟的) in attending to responsibilities—are typical characteristics of the model organizational citizen, the people who keep things running as they should. They follow the rules, help out, and are concerned about the people they work with. It’s the conscientious worker who helps newcomers or updates people who return after an absence, who gets to work on time and never abuses sick leaves, who always gets things done on deadline.

Conscientiousness is a key to success in any field. In studies of job performance, outstanding effectiveness for almost all jobs, from semi 鄄 skilled labor to sales and management, depends on conscientiousness. It is particularly important for outstanding performance in jobs at the lower levels of an organization: the secretary whose message taking is perfect, the delivery truck driver who is always on time.

Among sales representatives for a large American car manufacturer, those who were most conscientious had the largest volume of sales. Conscientiousness also offers a buffer (缓冲) against the threat of job loss in today’s constantly changing market, because employees with this quality are among the most valued. For the sales representatives, their level of conscientiousness mattered almost as much as their sales in determining who stayed on.

There is an air around highly conscientious people that makes them seem even better than they actually are. Their reputation for dependability influences managers 爷 evaluations of their work, giving them higher evaluations than objective measures of their performance would predict.

But conscientiousness in the absence of social skills can lead to problems.

Since conscientious people demand so much of themselves, they can hold other people to their own standards, and so be overly judgmental when others don 爷 t show the same high levels of model behavior. Factory workers in Great Britain and the United States who were extremely conscientious, for example, tended to criticize co-workers even about failures that seemed unimportant to those they criticized, which damaged their relationships.When conscientiousness takes the form of living up to expectations, it can discourage creativity. In creative professions like art or advertising, openness to wild ideas and spontaneity (自发性) are scarce and in demand. Success in such occupations calls for a balance, however; without enough conscientiousness to follow through, people become mere dreamers, with nothing to show for their imaginativeness.

第五部分: 书面表达(满分25 分)81. 请根据你对以下两幅图的理解, 以“Actions Speak Louder than Words”为题, 用英语写一篇作文。

参考词汇: banner (横幅)stump (树桩)你的作文应包括以下内容:1. 简要描述两幅图的内容; 2. 概述你对两幅图中不同做法的理解; 3. 举例说明两幅图对你的启示。注意:1. 可参照图片适当发挥; 2. 作文词数 150 左右; 3. 作文中不得提及有关考生个人身份的任何信息,如校名、人名等。

Actions Speak Louder than Words